Kim Cattrall is ready to step back into Samantha Jones’ fabulous shoes.
“‘Imagine where you will be and it will be so..’ ❤️💋,” Cattrall wrote via Instagram in celebration of her 67th birthday on Tuesday, August 22. In her post, the actress shared a photo of herself sitting atop a throne with her hands placed on two giant lion carvings.
The regal snap was accompanied by a second upload where she held up two brownies with birthday candles, set to the tune of “Birthday” by The Beatles.
Cattrall will kick off her 67th year with an appearance on season 2 of And Just Like That. Cattrall portrayed iconic Sex and the City character Samantha Jones for all six seasons of the original HBO show and the two subsequent sequels but did not return for the Max spinoff, which premiered in 2021 and features a new chapter for Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon).
While season 1 of AJLT revealed that Samantha’s absence was due to a fallout between her and Carrie, behind the scenes, Cattrall repeatedly slammed the show and Parker. In May, however, it was reported that Cattrall would appear in a single episode during the season 2 finale, which airs on Thursday, August 24. Although Cattrall is only stepping back into the SATC universe briefly (and reportedly didn’t film with her former costars), she knew exactly how she wanted to Samantha to return — in style.
“It’s very interesting to get a call from the head of HBO saying, ‘What can we do?’ and I went, ‘Hmm. Let me get creative,’” Cattrall quipped during a June appearance on The View. “And one of those things was to get [costume designer] Pat Field back, because I just thought that if I’m going to come back I gotta come back with that Samantha style, I gotta push it.”
Former costar Parker — with whom Cattrall has had many ups and downs over the years — told Entertainment Tonight in June that she was “really excited” about the cameo.
“I thought it was a really good idea and I was thrilled that, you know, we could make it happen and that it worked for her and it’s just really nice to see. It’s really nice. I was really pleased,” Parker, 58, told the outlet at the time.
Parker previously shared that Cattrall was not approached for the revival initially because “she made it clear” it was “not something she wanted to pursue.”
“It no longer felt comfortable for us, and so it didn’t occur to us,” Parker told The Hollywood Reporter in December 2021. “You’ve got to listen to somebody, and if they’re publicly talking about something and it doesn’t suggest it’s someplace they want to be, or a person they want to play, or an environment in which they want to be, you get to an age where you’re like, ‘Well, we hear that.’”
While the specifics surrounding the tension between Parker and Cattrall are unclear, Cattrall publicly voiced her contention for Parker following the death of her brother in February 2018, telling Parker to “stop exploiting our tragedy in order to restore your ‘nice girl’ persona.’
Parker for her part, has since shut down any claims she mistreated Cattrall throughout their working relationship.
“It’s very hard to talk about the situation with Kim because I’ve been so careful about not ever wanting to say anything that is unpleasant,” Parker said during a June 2022 appearance on the “Awards Chatter” podcast. “There has been one person talking. … I’ve spent a lot of years working really hard to always be decent to everybody on the set, to take care of people, to be responsible to and for people, both my employers and the people that I feel I’m responsible for as a producer of the show. And there just isn’t anyone else who’s ever talked about me this way.”
And Just Like That drops new episodes on Max every Thursday.
